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The promise of change is an easy position for an opposing politician to take, especially against an unpopular incumbent of the presidency. Barack Obama fought most of his campaign under the banner ''change is coming'' which at most stated the obvious: ''W'' was on the way out, so change was coming, either in the form of Obama or McCain.
The Obama brand may, in part, be about change and the bringing about of it, but change is just the effect. We need to identify the cause to get to the heart of the Obama brand.
What Barack is trying to give the American people is the sense of optimism that a change to his leadership will bring about. He promises to lead the US out of the darkness into the light, to deploy modern thinking on the health, jobs, the environment and so on to make his country and, given its international status, the world, a better place.
Considering Obama as a brand, I'd put Optimism at the heart of it. This is the idea he wants to own in the consumer's mind and the hope he wants to give them. The future's bright.. reminiscent of another brand beginning with O that promised optimism in its category.
The Heavenly brand model uses three values to describe the product being sold and three values to describe its personality.
We believe that the Obama brand map would look like this:
Obama's product values:
Intelligence: compared to his predecessor, enough said. This is the Professor-President, the multi-book author and erudite commentator and orator.
Innovation: he promises to blaze a trail and create a culture of enterprise and innovation and 'firsts' in America, driven by his own historic success at achieving the highest office in world politics.
Democracy: a democrat with a small 'd' as well as a big one, he is pioneering a collaborative approach to decision-making, witnessed by the expertise of the team he has built around himself.
Obama's personality values:
Bravery: in many ways, he is the ultimate 'challenger brand', embodied by the fearless determination he has shown to win against the odds.
Visionary: a true visionary, with the conviction that he's making history every day.
Human: a man of the people, the antithesis of the more withdrawn nature of the incumbent administration. He wants to make the presidency accessible to the people, to engage with them at their level and take on board what they have to say.
